What marks a mod/item as "OP" or "Unbalanced"?

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Shazam08

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Jul 29, 2019
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Question for the moral philosophers of modded minecraft:

Is an item considered to be OP if it is stupidly powerful, but also stupidly difficult to get?
 

Cptqrk

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Aug 24, 2013
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For the same reason people play GT- for the tedium of it all.

*snirk*

OP/UP is, as many have said, subjective to the user playing with the mods. Some people use supposed OP mods just to avoid the tedium of the long set up time you have to invest with other mods.

This is why there was (is? I'm not sure) the cheat Thaumcraft book.. Some thought this OP, but people who have done the research over and over and over again think of it as a gift from the minecraft gods.

OP? Maybe.
Necessary for some people? Yes.
 
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DanteGalileo

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'm not sure what you mean. Because survival is only survival for the first hour or so if that.

That's my point. There is an entire mode of gameplay designed for those who want to be able to build away without the tedium of gathering the resources.
 

Albeleo

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Jul 29, 2019
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Note to anyone arguing that Mimicry makes a "recursive loop" resulting in infinite ender pearls: this would be completely false. The mimichite is used up in creating the 16 ender pearl dust, and particularly in the really early part of the game gathering up a ton of mimichite is far from easy. You have a small-ish amount of mimichite and you use it to create a decent-ish amount of ender pearls. By the time you'd get to a point where you have so much mimichite that you could use it to create "infinite" ender pearls, you'd have approximately a bajillion other methods you could use that would result in far more ender pearls much faster and much easier.

It's useful in the very, very early game to get a few ender pearls. After that it's not worth the time to use it because there are far better ways to get ender pearls.
 

kaovalin

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Jul 29, 2019
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That's my point. There is an entire mode of gameplay designed for those who want to be able to build away without the tedium of gathering the resources.

So you play in vanilla minecraft without enchantments, or potions, or enchanted armor? Because otherwise you just arbitrarily drew a line and said if you cross it just play creative. I play like I want to, because its how I want to. Minecraft is designed to play how the invidual wants to, not how someone else does. Modded minecraft is even more true to this fact. You point is invalid because you have no idea what restrictions there are in my version of the game. We have totally different experiences.


Does it? I've only ever used it to figure out how different blocks look near each other or how machines work.

Testing while valid, is not a play style
 

DanteGalileo

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Jul 29, 2019
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So you play in vanilla minecraft without enchantments, or potions, or enchanted armor? Because otherwise you just arbitrarily drew a line and said if you cross it just play creative

No I didn't... I asked you why you don't simply play in creative mode.
 

kaovalin

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Jul 29, 2019
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No I didn't... I asked you why you don't simply play in creative mode.

What I was getting at is I play the game the way I want. It is a philosophical position to say the world is infinite, and infinite resources are available because of it with infinite time. The practical position is I put the limits I want to on myself and it makes mc fun. In fact playing mc your own way is what makes mc fun for everyone. Creative isnt the experience I'm looking for.

With me answering your question as best I feel I can, why do you ask why I don't play creative?
 

Not_Steve

Over-Achiever
Oct 11, 2013
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We have all been over this a million times
uploadfromtaptalk1395717191560.jpg

Can we turn this into a gif thread now?
 

kaovalin

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Jul 29, 2019
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Next frame is me proving that they don't with math's then proving since they dont understand the math they can't possibly understand the concept of possession either. Fast forwards 20 minutes and I've got them caught in a reductionist downward spiral until they hit rock bottom nihilism. From there you just build them back up as a thinking reasoning person by way of the life preserver of self valuation. It works about a-made-up-number% of the time.

EDIT: Back to the topic, sometimes I let OP stuff slide on my server because it is only OP if I were to use it, but to someone with less knowledge or ability its something they rely on. I'm not willing to enforce my ideas of fun on others when I could just as easily practice a little restraint. That way everyone has fun at no ones expense.
 

DanteGalileo

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Jul 29, 2019
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What I was getting at is I play the game the way I want.

As you should. So do I.

It is a philosophical position to say the world is infinite, and infinite resources are available because of it with infinite time. The practical position is I put the limits I want to on myself and it makes mc fun. In fact playing mc your own way is what makes mc fun for everyone. Creative isnt the experience I'm looking for.

This is the sorta answer I expected when I asked why you don't play creative mode.

With me answering your question as best I feel I can, why do you ask why I don't play creative?

Because it seemed an appropriate followup question to "With a nearly infinite world, and given nearly infinite time, there is infinite stuff. Just having a mod that lets you cut to the quick on that isnt necessarily OP..." And, you know... Discussion and stuff.

Wasn't really expecting the FTB posse to ride up on me but I can take it. This is my Friday night. I'm in a groovy mood.
 

MacAisling

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Apr 25, 2013
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While we can generally agree on the definition of "OP" and "unbalanced", their application to a mod or item is pure opinion that is sometimes very deeply & personally held. In my opinion, unless you are a mod developer, a mod pack developer, or a server operator, you shouldn't concern yourself about how anyone else plays the game. What the individual player should be asking is "would using this make the game more or less fun for me?" If using it makes you feel like you are cheating, then it is OP, for you. If it makes the game less fun (either by making it too easy or too hard), then it is unbalanced, for you. I am happy to admit that I have used the built-in cheat codes in every game I have ever played. I use cheats, I play on easy mode, I switch into peaceful if I'm trying to do something & don't want to spend my time fending off the zombie apocalypse, & I hate mods that make me spend extra time vanilla mining & several hours at a crafting table to get to the hot new toy. If a mod wants to wrap a cheat up in a cool new game mechanic toy, I think that's fabulous, but given a choice between 5 steps to ore doubling & 20 steps to ore quintupling, I'll take the easier path. With the exception of iridium, most ores aren't that hard to come by. All that said, there are some things that even I think are a little OP, like rainbow dye trees & bedrock tools, weapons, & armor, but then, I think being OP was the whole point, wasn't it?
 
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kaovalin

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Jul 29, 2019
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As you should. So do I.

This is the sorta answer I expected when I asked why you don't play creative mode.

Because it seemed an appropriate followup question to "With a nearly infinite world, and given nearly infinite time, there is infinite stuff. Just having a mod that lets you cut to the quick on that isnt necessarily OP..." And, you know... Discussion and stuff.

Wasn't really expecting the FTB posse to ride up on me but I can take it. This is my Friday night. I'm in a groovy mood.

Ah, well I appoligize if it felt I was jumping down your throat, everyone gets carried away sometimes. There was a whole thread before (casillerator?) that talked about how people use "just play creative" as an insult in regards to modded minecraft (even some plugins).

I honestly thought you were questioning the nuances of playing modded FTB vs creative and the blurry lines between them. That is what my original comment was getting at. One person's OP, is another person's can't live without. Since everyone has varying degrees of free time, I think that has a lot to do with what choices they make in what's worth spending their time on, and they'd rather find shortcuts to get to the parts they like. A sort've minecraft experience a la carte you might say.
 
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casilleroatr

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Ah, well I appoligize if it felt I was jumping down your throat, everyone gets carried away sometimes. There was a whole thread before (casillerator?) that talked about how people use "just play creative" as an insult in regards to modded minecraft (even some plugins).

I honestly thought you were questioning the nuances of playing modded FTB vs creative and the blurry lines between them. That is what my original comment was getting at. One person's OP, is another person's can't live without. Since everyone has varying degrees of free time, I think that has a lot to do with what choices they make in what's worth spending their time on, and they'd rather find shortcuts to get to the parts they like. A sort've minecraft experience a la carte you might say.
Yeah that thread was me and this one reminded me of it a bit. Hopefully this one stays on course better with less need for mod attention. I came to one of my first ever proper "OP item" dilemmas in a single player world not long ago. It is not a single mod being bad, but as always a crazy cross mod interaction which has already been mentioned on this thread. Magic crops + time torch (+MFR). At first I was enjoying it but after awhile I felt that the combo was dominating the entire world concentrating all possible fun to be had into one corner of the game. I will still use Dartcraft and magical crops happily, and I might use the rod of time to help manually establish farms from time to time. But that is a combo that I don't fancy using again.

There is one big cheat I do though. I spawn in an advanced thaumaturgy creative node + wand recharging station at the beginning of a world. Thaumcraft 4.1 is finally playable for me except I hate nothing more than running around recharging the wand.

So by taking away some powerful things, and adding in some other powerful things, I strike a balance I am happy with. I still get the veneer of a resource allocation game which you don't get in creative mode too. That was one of the points I wanted to make in the last thread that creative building is often very fun, but it can be even more fun if you have to answer a couple of resource management questions. But for me I don't want to grind my way to enough obscure forestry planks just for a nice roof.

Too many ramblings, too little sleeps, sorry everyone :oops: